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Manage secrets
The Secret resource enables users to store sensitive data.
Sensitive information is anything a user considers non-public, e.g.:
- TLS keys
- tokens
- passwords
Secrets belong to a specific Mesh resource, and cannot be shared across different Meshes.
Policies use secrets at runtime.
Kong Mesh leverages
Secretresources internally for certain operations, for example when storing auto-generated certificates and keys when Mutual TLS is enabled.
On Kubernetes, Kong Mesh under the hood leverages the native Kubernetes Secret resource to store sensitive information.
Kong Mesh secrets are stored in the same namespace as the Control Plane with type set to system.kuma.io/secret:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: sample-secret
namespace: kong-mesh-system # Kong Mesh will only manage secrets in the same namespace as the CP
labels:
kuma.io/mesh: default # specify the Mesh scope of the secret
data:
value: dGVzdAo= # Base64 encoded
type: system.kuma.io/secret # Kong Mesh will only manage secrets of this type
Use kubectl to manage secrets like any other Kubernetes resource.
echo "apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: sample-secret
namespace: kong-mesh-system
labels:
kuma.io/mesh: default
data:
value: dGVzdAo=
type: system.kuma.io/secret" | kubectl apply -f -
kubectl get secrets -n kong-mesh-system --field-selector='type=system.kuma.io/secret'
# NAME TYPE DATA AGE
# sample-secret system.kuma.io/secret 1 3m12s
Kubernetes Secrets are identified with the name + namespace format,
therefore it is not possible to have a Secret with the same name in multiple meshes.
Multiple Meshes always belong to one Kong Mesh CP that always runs in one Namespace.
In order to reassign a Secret from one Mesh to another Mesh you need to delete the Secret resource and create it in another Mesh.
The data field of a Kong Mesh Secret is a Base64 encoded value.
Use the base64 command in Linux or macOS to encode any value in Base64:
# Base64 encode a file
cat cert.pem | base64
# or Base64 encode a string
echo "value" | base64
Access to the Secret HTTP API
Secret API requires authentication. Consult Accessing Admin Server from a different machine for how to configure remote access.
Scope of the Secret
Kong Mesh provides two types of Secrets.
Mesh-scoped Secrets
Mesh-scoped Secrets are bound to a given Mesh. Only this kind of Secrets can be used in Mesh Policies like Provided CA or TLS setting in External Service.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: sample-secret
namespace: kong-mesh-system
labels:
kuma.io/mesh: default # specify the Mesh scope of the secret
data:
value: dGVzdAo=
type: system.kuma.io/secret
Global-scoped Secrets
Global-scoped Secrets are not bound to a given Mesh and cannot be used in Mesh Policies.
Global-scoped Secrets are used for internal purposes.
You can manage them just like the regular secrets using kumactl or kubectl.
Notice that the type is different and kuma.io/mesh label is not present.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: sample-secret
namespace: kong-mesh-system
data:
value: dGVzdAo=
type: system.kuma.io/global-secret
Behaviour in multi-zone deployment
The Secrets are synced from global to zones, not the other way around as this would risk exposing sensitive information.
It’s invalid to create Secrets on zone, if you do, the control plane deletes them when KDS sync runs.
Usage
Here is an example of how you can use a Kong Mesh Secret with a provided Mutual TLS backend.
The examples below assumes that the Secret object has already been created beforehand.
type: Mesh
name: default
mtls:
backends:
- name: ca-1
type: provided
config:
cert:
secret: my-cert # name of the Kong Mesh Secret
key:
secret: my-key # name of the Kong Mesh Secret
